Integration of amorphous ferromagnetic oxides with multiferroic materials for room temperature magnetoelectric spintronics.

A room temperature amorphous ferromagnetic oxide semiconductor can substantially reduce the cost and complexity associated with utilizing crystalline materials for spintronic devices. We report a new material (FeDyTb)O (FDTO), which shows semiconducting behavior with reasonable electrical conductivity (~500 mOhm-cm), an optical band-gap (2.4 eV), and a large enough magnetic moment (~200 emu/cc), all of which can be tuned by varying the oxygen content during deposition.

Thermal and Plasmonic Stabilization of Silver Nanostructures Using a Bilayer Anchoring Technique.

In this work, we demonstrate how to suppress the shape instability of silver (Ag) nanotriangular pyramids following high-temperature annealing without a coating or encapsulation, thus producing a more stable optical plasmonic system. Nanosphere lithography (NSL) was used to fabricate large-area arrays of nanotriangular pyramids of Ag on glass substrates. By using a combination of morphology and spectroscopic studies it was found that exposure of this system to high temperatures of 473 K and beyond in air led to a rapid change in nanostructure shape, and thus, the surface area, with a substantial change to the original plasmonic character.